The pushback of Sununu

10/17/12 2:57 PM EDT

Mitt Romney standout surrogate John Sununu came loaded for bear with Soledad O'Brien on CNN this morning, accusing her of defending the president with regards to the Libya question and said her colleague and debate moderator Candy Crowley later clarified that the Republican was right.

We have a clip put together by our media team of the best-of moments, but from the transcript, Sununu said, "It's ridiculous you're trying to defend him on this."
O'Brien drilled down on the specific claim from the president about having used the phrase "acts of terror" the day after Benghazi and Cairo were in flames.

"He got caught lying," Sununu said. "Because he was referring, a, to the original 9/11. And b, to the previous paragraph in which he inferred that it was a video..."

When O'Brien interrupted, he replied, "This is ridiculous. And if you're dwelling — if you're going to dwell on this you're out of your mind."

Crowley has gotten a fair amount of hits for having repeated her comment at the president's request that he had used the words "acts of terror," although she tried at the time to explain that the administration as a whole still focused on a video that wasn't actually the cause of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks. There's no question she became part of the moment when that happened, and it threw Romney. But candidates — as was the case with President Obama in Denver — need to push back to make their own cases.

Romney got caught up on the narrow, "gotcha" point he was pushing the president on — and which President Obama was slicing to a thin technicality — and lost the opportunity he had indicated for days he wanted to make a broader point about how the administration handled the aftermath of the attacks, and how it relates to a larger policy point. Many Republicans, while expressing frustration with Crowley, also believe Romney could have fared better there regardless and will have to figure out how to ahead of Monday's foreign policy debate.